Descartes Before the Horse

Without mystery, I'm not sure what's left.

It takes a lot to remind me of this, though. I'm not sure why, but every so often in my life a huge mystery crops up. I'm frustrated by it. It worries me and destroys my sense of ego - as most of my ego is based on me grasping the world around me in a smug, know-it-all sort of way. But I realize soon enough the excitement of it all. A new puzzle to solve. A new challenge to figure out.

The frustrating part is not knowing whether I'll figure it out or whether my solution to the mystery will work. And of course there's the general uncertainty of having something prevalent in my life that's up in the air. We, as humans, like closure. We like bad guys to lose in movies and good guys to get the girl. We like loose ends being tied up because we get on edge when they don't. We hate open endings because they excite us and we seek comfort. Our primal quest for food, shelter, companionship is a question that demands an answer. We have to have those answers, because without them, we wonder if we'll survive. Perhaps knowing if the hero escapes the deadly trap, captures the villain and marries the girl is a matter of survival for us as well.

In the drama of our own lives, we are terrified by the unknown, by the x factor that crops up in our plans and ruins them. Makes us rethink them. Maybe takes a goal away from us permanently. This is even more frustrating - more so than having a question up in the air, is having it answered in a way that we didn't want. From this point, we usually choose denial or we go through the five stages of grief as if we'd lost something as important as life itself.

We deny, we get angry, we bargain, we get sad, and then, hopefully, we accept.

The question is, do we hate having something in our lives that is a frustrating mystery more than we hate having the answer to that mystery be the one we weren't hoping for? Would we rather be frustrated or disappointed?